Robotic vehicles (sometimes referred to as “drones”) are increasingly being used in various consumer and commercial applications. For example, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) may be equipped with various sensors, such as cameras, whose output may be sensitive to rotational maneuvers of the robotic vehicle during flight (e.g., pitch, roll, and yaw). To compensate for UAV rotations in sensor output, a mechanical or digital gimbal may be used so that the sensor can point in a given direction independent of the orientation or rotations of the UAV. A mechanical gimbal may physically adjust the orientation of a camera by an amount that compensates for UAV rotations. Alternatively, a digital gimbal that uses a wide field-of-view lens to capture video may enable digital selection of a portion of the captured video compensates for UAV rotations.
Robotic vehicle control systems, particularly UAV control systems, are typically egocentric around the center of gravity. Therefore, UAV rotations are generally centered around the UAV's center of gravity. When the camera is positioned at the UAV's center of gravity, a gimbal can adjust the camera orientation and/or video output to compensate for the rotational movement, thereby effectively removing any jitter or other movement from the video output. However, cameras mounted on gimbals are generally positioned to one side of the UAV's center of gravity (e.g., up, down, left or right). Consequently, the gimbal cannot compensate for translational movements (i.e., vertical, horizontal, or both) of the camera that occur during rotations due to the distance between the camera and the UAV's center of gravity. Thus, the output of a camera (or other sensor) mounted on a gimble some distance from the center of gravity of a UAV will suffer movement or jitter during UAV maneuvers despite compensating rotations of the gimbal.